The Walt Disney American Experience PBS documentary is a good profile of a box of contradictions: a wholesome 'family' man and a rabid anti-communist conservative who was one of the heads of the Alliance that made things horrible for people in Hollywood for years (and what a speech he gives to his workers that made them organize *more* to strike in 1941); someone who claimed he wanted things simple and wasn't "literary" while creating one of the great abstract experimental films (Fantasia) and changing an artistic medium through his "fairy tales" and silly symphonies and Disneyland and so on.This is a very fair document of a man who created many of the films that made children around the world cry and laugh and (occasionally, as in part of the forest sequence in Snow White) pee themselves, while also being "hard-driving" while being inspirational for his workers (or those who stuck around).It's chock-a-block of great clips and somewhat obvious but nevertheless enlightening analyses of the "Big Five" first films (Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi and Fantasia), and on to things from television like Walt Disneyland TV and the park itself. Here's a man who could do anything and for the better part of his later life got obsessed with trains and led on to making THE amusement park of the world (or as one interviewee calls it "a living animation"). From a portrait like this it's somewhat easy to call him difficult (he likely was), but it's rare to get someone in America who was a genuine entertainer - whether it connected with everyone, as he aimed for whether it was a Donald Duck cartoon or the blades of grass in the park, he had to make it just so - while being so, uh, 'wholesome' (depending on who you talk to of course).He's a wonderful bunch of contradictions, which is something we can relate to even as we're not all "visionaries" and such.

10/10If the world had been blessed with more great visionaries as Walt Disney we would be living in a much kinder and forgiving world, as his world is closest to Utopia. This two-part, four hour documentary focuses on the legacy that Walt Disney left behind for the world to remember the man and his vision. To this day almost 100 years ago since his first animated production in the year 1922, the six (6) minute animated short Little Red Riding Hood was released Walt Disney persevered through all the naysayers and endless string of penny pinching bankers to build his empire and the sheer vastness of his rich colored cinematography decade after decade and with an imagination of what the present (not the future) should include like no other person before him. Disneyland and Disneyworld are just two examples of his vision of Utopia.I especially liked that this documentary provides fair credit towards Walt's older brother Roy O. Disney for helping build the Walt Disney brand and empire to what we know exists today. No doubt Walt was the visionary and driving force behind the Disney's creative and extensive brand but it was Roy who was the reliable older brother who made Walt's dreams come true through shrewd financing and brokering mega million dollar deals with heavy financiers who were hungrier than a pack of wolves to take over the business if it floundered. This film also outlines how during the evolution of labor unions first being formed in the 1940's on the outskirts of the Disney lots, Walt literally escaped the turmoil of bargaining with organized labor as he travelled to far away countries and left the labor resolution issues to his big brother Roy who is credited with resolving the labor unrest which allowed the Disney studios to forge ahead with so many historic and successful feature animated films, and never before seen world class amusement parks.The documentary is well paced and extremely insightful on how Walt's endless drive and high energy began with his own superior artistic talents to draw characters and develop a short animated feature. Walt's fortitude to draw idyllic characters expanded over his early years to the unheard of venture of the very first full feature animated film, the 1937 release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released in 1937, it is as popular today if not more so than it was almost 80 years later when it was first released. Ironically, Walt Disney has won more Academy Awards than any other single person but the most prestigious Academy Award for the Best Picture category had always eluded Walt. The Academy members have always snubbed the art form of animation (as well as comedy themed films) in the elusive Best Picture category. Instead the Academy created specific categories for animated feature films to win their own category of Oscars and thus excluded them from the "Best Picture" category. What the Academy could not take away from Walt Disney and his production company though was his fan base and their loyalty. Walt's expansive fan base has rewarded Walt Disney with billions of satisfied customers around the entire world and with billions of dollars in revenues which have allowed Walt Disney productions to continue producing state of the art films and a host of related Disney themed products that have warmed the hearts of children and parents around the world.I loved the insight this documentary provides on Walt's personal life with his wife and two daughters (one who was adopted) and there is an endless supply of Walt's ear to ear grin which personifies how much he loved what he was building both with his family as well as with his Walt Disney Empire. Sadly the film touches briefly on the distance held between Walt and his father Elias until his father's death at the age of 82. Walt and Roy did purchase their parents a home in North Hollywood California upon their business success with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. After moving in to their beautiful new home Walt's mother Flora complained about their new gas furnace which the repairmen supposedly fixed. Unfortunately Flora died a month after moving in to their new home of asphyxiation caused by the gas furnace fumes at the age of 70. Walt never would discuss the circumstances of his mother's unexpected and unnatural death.Central to the Disney history is the vision and subsequent construction of Disneyland. A good chunk of this worthy documentary is spent with actual footage of the gradual construction of Disneyland with Walt being front row and center throughout the building -phase and the eventual grand opening on July 17, 1955, on a hot and sweltering day after many of the work crews said it would never be ready for the pre-announced day of Disneyland's grand opening. Walt's perseverance again paid off and with the many dignitaries present, television crews and tens of thousands of visitors the grand opening proceeded as originally planned. Near the end of the documentary there is an unknown person who is mentioned as having irritated Walt by stating that if Walt had chosen to run for the presidency of the United States, he would have won. To which Walt retorted, "Why would I want be President of the United States when I am already King of Disneyland?" Thank you Walt and Roy Disney for such an abundance of fine feature family films, documentaries, and not only the epitome of what an Amusement Park (Disneyland, Disneyworld, family resorts, cruise ships and Epcot Center) and family centric vacation should encompass, but what literally billions of happy paying customers have grown up with through the family generations. The Disney legacy can be summed up in two words…FAMILY VALUES.Scores a 10 out of 10

American Experience: Walt Disney (2015)**** (out of 4)This two-part look at the life and career of Walt Disney certainly has some flaws. I will openly admit that but at the same time there's so much great knowledge and footage here that it's almost silly to complain too much about it.The first part of the documentary covers Walt's early days and how he got interested in going into show business. We learn about his earliest animated movies and how he ended up broke before finally getting money with the Alice shorts. From here we learn about various issues that happened with his family and how a little mouse would end up saving his career. From here we see the building of Disney Studios as well as him dreaming of doing feature films.The second portion of the film deals with some of the darker and more controversial moments including various strikes by his workers who felt they were being mistreated. The studio's disappointing box office returns to movies like BAMBI and DUMBO are also discussed but the main focus is Disney Land and how television would help bring Walt's vision to life. We also take a look at some of his latest pictures, which were attacked during a time when people didn't see peace and happiness instead they were seeing shocking images of violence.The biggest problem with this documentary is that its four hour running time simply isn't long enough to fully get into this man. I will admit that I didn't know too much about his personal story so I found this documentary to be full of wonderful knowledge and there's no question that all the footage from his movies as well as the personal movies were terrific. Even more entertaining was seeing Disney Land being built and just looking at the footage makes it a wonder that the vision ending up coming true. The film certainly is extremely long but it's never boring and it's definitely worth seeing.

"American Experience: Walt Disney" is a two-part four-hour documentary about the life and career of Walt Disney--animator, entrepreneur, visionary. It takes a pretty standard approach to its subject, mixing contemporary interviews with various talking heads (biographers, academics, Disney animators) with plentiful archival footage of its subject from a period of over 40 years, along with clips from numerous Disney productions. While the piece is not exactly a paean to Disney and certainly does not emanate from the Disney Studio publicity machine, it's not a wholesale attack on him either. It does offer a critical look at Disney's relationship with his staff and his sometimes contentious relationship with his brother Roy, who was also his business partner and the one who oversaw the studio's financial health. Walt had a vision and he sought to bring it to reality come hell or high water, the banks and unions be damned. One can admire his technical accomplishments and revel in the breathtaking artistry of his most significant works, but still take a jaundiced look at the way Disney's output, from his animated features to his TV shows and theme parks, watered down the complexity of human life and history and polished down the rough edges to promote a glossy worldview of a middle-class, racially homogeneous society with conservative values and idealized standards of beauty.Part 1 offers an abundance of footage from Disney's early days in Kansas City, including clips from his earliest cartoons ("Laugh-o-grams") and pictures of him and his partners (including Ub Iwerks) at work. It follows him to California and his efforts to find a distributor for his films and create his own company. He had numerous setbacks, including losing the rights to his character, Oswald the Rabbit, but he persevered and found worldwide success with Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies. Eventually, Part 1 settles on the creation of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937) and the extraordinary risks Disney took in crafting a feature-length animated film and the expenses incurred. We even see footage of its Hollywood premiere and get a blow-by-blow account of the audience reaction, one of the best sequences in the whole documentary. Disney then plunges into PINOCCHIO, FANTASIA and BAMBI, despite the impending world war and the eventual loss of the lucrative European market.Part 2 opens with the 1941 strike that imperiled the studio and Disney's angry break with animator Art Babbitt, one of the leaders of the strike. (Babbitt eventually went back to work for Disney, a fact that goes unmentioned in the documentary.) SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946) is covered, along with the backlash by the NAACP against its treatment of racial themes, and some attention is given to Disney's testimony as an anti-communist "friendly witness" before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In the 1950s, Disney becomes increasingly obsessed with model railroads (encouraged by one of his top animators, Ward Kimball) and even builds one on his property that's large enough for Disney and various child visitors to ride around on, seen in ample home movie footage. The next big focus is Disneyland and Walt's efforts to design and build it and open it on schedule. Numerous minor disasters disrupt the opening day and these extend to the celebrity-packed live TV broadcast of the day's festivities, seen in lots of footage preserved from the event. Disneyland occupies most of Part 2 before the focus shifts to MARY POPPINS (1964), the subject of the 2013 Disney feature, SAVING MR. BANKS (unmentioned here), the plans for EPCOT and, finally, Disney's death.The talking heads include at least four authors who've written books about Disney, some critical, some favorable: Richard Schickel, Neal Gabler, Michael Barrier, and Steven Watts. Their insights are always welcome and will hopefully propel viewers to read their books. (I've read two of them and have acquired a third.) There are a number of academics who contribute their thoughts, although I could have done without most of them. There is one African-American female art historian, Carmenita Higginbotham, who weighs in on the SONG OF THE SOUTH controversy. While she's critical of Disney on that issue, she actually offers a number of favorable assessments of other aspects of Disney's work throughout the documentary, all delivered with a refreshing degree of enthusiasm and affection.Finally, I was very pleased to hear from a trio of Disney animators and designers who had worked with Disney in the 1930s and are still around to talk about it: Ruthie Thompson, Don Lusk, and Robert Givens. (Don Lusk is over 100 at this point—and didn't look a day over 80!) Which begs the question of why there wasn't more footage of interviews from past documentaries about Disney. "Frank and Ollie" from 1995, for instance, offered profiles of two of Disney's famous "nine old men," Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Ward Kimball was interviewed on several occasions and he's prominently featured along with other veteran Disney personnel in "It All Started with a Mouse: The Disney Story" (1989), which I've also reviewed on this site and which had amazing behind-the-scenes footage from the 1930s and '40s that would have been useful in this documentary. I also wondered where Leonard Maltin was. Why wasn't he interviewed for this? He certainly knows as much about Disney as any of the featured interviewees. Is he too closely tied to the Disney Company and was he ordered not to participate? Or did the filmmakers simply not approach him? In any event, Disney remains one of the most fascinating entertainment figures of the 20th century and he left a huge footprint on American culture. He's one of the few film and TV industry pioneers who is still widely known among young people. This two-parter is well worth seeing by anyone who's interested in Disney, although I'm sure there is enough footage and material for a whole documentary series on him that I hope will one day emerge.